Percival Frost (1817–1898), was an English mathematician.

Life

Percival Frost was born at

Kingston upon Hull Kingston upon Hull, usually shortened to Hull, is a historic maritime city and unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It lies upon the River Hull at its confluence with the Humber Est ...

on 1 September 1817, the second son of Charles Frost. He was educated at Beverley and Oakham, and entered St. John's College, Cambridge, in October 1835, graduating B.A. as

second wrangler At the University of Cambridge in England, a "Wrangler" is a student who gains first-class honours in the Mathematical Tripos competition. The highest-scoring student is the Senior Wrangler, the second highest is the Second Wrangler, and so on ...

in 1839 and M.A. in 1842. He was chosen first Smith prizeman in 1839, beating the senior wrangler, Benjamin Morgan Cowie, his fellow-collegian, and he was elected to a fellowship at St. John's College on 19 March. In 1841 he was ordained deacon, and in the same year vacated his fellowship by marriage. He held a mathematical lectureship in Jesus College from 1847 to 1859, and in King's College from 1859 to 1889; but his chief work consisted in the tuition of private pupils, among whom were John Rigby,

William Kingdon Clifford William Kingdon Clifford (4 May 18453 March 1879) was a British mathematician and philosopher. Building on the work of Hermann Grassmann, he introduced what is now termed geometric algebra, a special case of the Clifford algebra named in his ...

, and

Joseph Wolstenholme Joseph Wolstenholme (30 September 1829 – 18 November 1891) was an United Kingdom, English mathematician. Wolstenholme was born in Eccles, Greater Manchester, Eccles near Salford, Greater Manchester, Salford, Lancashire, England, the son of a M ...

. He was a man of wide interests and varied attainments, an accomplished pianoforte player, and a successful painter in water-colours. On 2 June 1841 he was married at Finchley to Jennett Louisa, daughter of Richard Dixon of Oak Lodge, Finchley. In 1854, Frost edited the first three sections of

Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on ...

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton () was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment that followed ...

. New editions were published in 1863, 1878, and 1883. In 1863 he prepared, in conjunction with

, ''A Treatise on Solid Geometry'', of which second and third editions, by Frost alone, appeared in 1875 and 1886. ''Hints for the Solution of Problems'' in the Third Edition of ''Solid Geometry'' was published in 1887. His third work, ''An Elementary Treatise on Curve Tracing'', appeared in 1872. On 7 June 1883, Frost was admitted as a fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

, and in the same year he was elected by King's College, Cambridge, to a fellowship, which he retained until his death. In 1883 Frost proceeded to the recently established degree of

Doctor of Science A Doctor of Science (; most commonly abbreviated DSc or ScD) is a science doctorate awarded in a number of countries throughout the world. Africa Algeria and Morocco In Algeria, Morocco, Libya and Tunisia, all universities accredited by the s ...

. Frost died at Cambridge on 5 June 1898, at his house in Fitzwilliam Street, and was buried on 10 June in the Mill Road cemetery, Cambridge. Besides the works already mentioned, Frost was the author of numerous papers in the '' Cambridge Mathematical Journal'', the '' Oxford and Cambridge Journal of Mathematics'', and the ''

Quarterly Journal of Mathematics The ''Quarterly Journal of Mathematics'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed mathematics journal established in 1930 from the merger of '' The Quarterly Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics'' and the '' Messenger of Mathematics''. According to the '' ...

''.

Works

* 1854
Newton's Principia, sections I, II, III with Notes and Illustrations and a Collection of Problems
link from

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

. * 1863: (with

A Treatise on Solid Geometry
link from

Hathitrust HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries. Its holdings include content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digit ...

* 1872
An Elementary Treatise on Curve Tracing
link from HathiTrust.

References

* Sydney Lee (editor) (1901
Supplement to Dictionary of National Biography, volume 2
see Percival Frost. * Editor (December 1898) "Percival Frost", The Eagle. * Victor Plarr (1895) ''Men and Women of the Time: a dictionary of contemporaries''. {{DEFAULTSORT:Frost, Percival 1817 births 1898 deaths 19th-century English mathematicians Mathematicians from Kingston upon Hull English editors Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge Fellows of St John's College, Cambridge Fellows of King's College, Cambridge Fellows of the Royal Society